[May 10th] We've fixed Hellgates! [Updated May 11th]

With yesterday's update, we have drastically expanded the size of the Outlands. With this, we have also increased the amount of Hellgates appearing in the open world. An additional change was made, where Hellgates would no longer despawn in case nobody entered it. Unfortunately, this caused an unintended side effect where - over time - Hellgates would mostly be available in zones which were rarely visited by players.

During today's maintenance, we have deployed a hotfixto address this issue (along with some performance improvements). The Hellgates will now despawn after 30 minutes just like before the yesterday's patch, which should make them appear more consistently throughout the world.

Jump into Albion, run some Hellgates and let us know how it feels after this update.

We have already noticed a big increase in the amount of players playing in Hellgates with today's adjustment, however, the amount of players running HGs is still slightly lower than before Oberon Patch #5. After discussion with developers, we are planning on vastly increasing the limit of the number of Hellgates spawning. We will be deploying this change with tomorrow's maintenance.

for clarification:
Hell Gates are not on a fixed spawn timer. Once the gatekeeper spawns, it will despawn after 30 minutes, which will then spawn a hell gate at random at another location.

Now, what caused the issue with Hell Gates (that we fixed today) as that we turned of the despawn for the gatekeepers. Since gatekeepers in far away zones get killed more rarely, this caused them pile up in far away zones, meaning that no new gatekeepers would spawn in populated zones any more. This is now fixed.

In general, this means that if you want to find a hell gate fast, it's still best to roam the map looking for one as opposed to waiting a set a location.

Having said that, if you are seeing a significant difference between perceived respawn times now and how they were before the mid season patch, please let us know. We'll be monitoring this closely.

Korn, with the influx of new players, and the buffs to hgs, have you guys thought about reducing the Respawn Time of hgs?.
Yesterday we were doing some, finding one was a miracle, getting in, only one boss left, guys on flat 4 running, killed them, did the boss (all in 5 minutes), and 20 More minutes to find a hg.
Its harder and More challenging to find a hg right know than doing it.

if you need ride around, the window to intercept a gate is 20 seconds...

So riding around makes just sense, if nobody is close to the gate, you have no chance to stop someone kill it
thats why people guarded their gates..

Your gates are still on like 45 minutes respawn, we have ride through 10 maps for no gate..

i am loosing faith you understand what your player base is doing and wants..

we do NOT want to do 40 mins horse simulator for 1 minute pvp

we would like to have the old system where we continously could have all 10 mins a 2 on 2 fight...

thank you

If you think loot of fame is too much, adjust this, but leave us our continous full loot non zerg pvp.the only pvp activity for 2 man btw

P.S: if i gather i have more consitent pvp action as if i try do 2 man hg...

Loging out again, waiting for next hotfix

A hint to fix your systeM it seems you have way too many spawn locations for the amount of hellgates to spawn, i suggest to double your hellgate pool..(but not the location ..)

at the moment you see tons of flat 4 solo players, because nobody bothers to do this horse simulation thing, among other things that make no sense any more ..like overcharge..because you not find a gate to use your overcharge in 2 gates

The post was edited 4 times, last by Hollywoodi (May 10th 2019, 12:51pm).

Hey there,
for clarification:
Hell Gates are not on a fixed spawn timer. Once the gatekeeper spawns, it will despawn after 30 minutes, which will then spawn a hell gate at random at another location.

Now, what caused the issue with Hell Gates (that we fixed today) as that we turned of the despawn for the gatekeepers. Since gatekeepers in far away zones get killed more rarely, this caused them pile up in far away zones, meaning that no new gatekeepers would spawn in populated zones any more. This is now fixed.

In general, this means that if you want to find a hell gate fast, it's still best to roam the map looking for one as opposed to waiting a set a location.

Having said that, if you are seeing a significant difference between perceived respawn times now and how they were before the mid season patch, please let us know. We'll be monitoring this closely.

The problem is you released a whole new Anglia and Cumbria sized land with no one living in it yet and those are tied directly with respawn rates.

Getting to a gate and fighting for it is much more appealing than running around to look for one that is up. As a gate group, the more time spent roaming through zerg lands - the less chance you have to actually get a fair 5v5 fight.

Korn what is the point of not having HGs spawn at least every 10 minutes in EVERY zone where HGs are available? HGs drive content. If teams are forced to just travel for days (especially in zerg territories) to simply find small man content you are just going to zap their motivation to even do it anymore. Please consider spawn timers based on zone and not entire world combined.

If you (SBI) wants hell gates to be contested more AND also make it more accessible for everyone including PUGs that have different city locks, why not just make hell gates ONLY spawn in the Royal Continent?

With that small change, city locks won't matter and the zone pool will be smaller. This will force players to stay in royal continent

The only downside to this is that same guild/same alliance members won't be able to attack each other in the forced flag PvP Zone (the circles around Hellgates in Royal Continent)